One evening a week or so ago, Shonnie, Gracelyn and I watched “Dead Poets Society” together. At the film’s conclusion, I began to ponder the course of my formal education—from the first grade [...]

Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and [...]

One morning a few weeks ago, I was browsing the daily online headlines when I came across an article describing the lengthy prison sentences, ranging from 10 to 22 years, given four Proud Boys. [...]

An Octogenarian Looks Back on His Path to Good Health If you’d known me when I was in my 20s and 30s, a hyper-masculine, self-indulgent, beer-swilling rebel (without much of a cause), you might [...]

How many of y’all remember that Sixties adage, “Don’t trust anybody over thirty.”? Well, now that I’m half a century past that imaginary line of demarcation, I can look back and see that the [...]

My time as a University of Tennessee football player The University of Tennessee is currently one of the top five football teams in the nation, a far cry from my experience as a Vol football [...]

My longtime friend Stewart Horn was born on July 3, 1942, and he lived a long and full life. He died on September 23, 2022. I first met Stewart when, at the age of 12, I joined Boy Scout Troop [...]

Was I cranky? No doubt.? Judgmental? Absolutely. Disheartened? Unquestionably. And I’d been unconsciously operating out of this frame of mind for months. Yeah, yeah, I know, given the pandemic, [...]

Saturday morning, alone in the mist and drizzle. Stillness envelops me. No sound but my footsteps, the drip of the moisture from the trees, the occasional songs of the birds.

As I’ve worked on my memoir, what’s become a massive act of self-interrogation, I’ve realized that my disconcerting experiences during the first grade that I've described above profoundly [...]